Theologian John Haught on evolution, etc...

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
[b]... since it is perfectly possible, in the actual world, for a brain lesion to prevent a subject from believing in accord with what he takes to be sufficient or decisive reason.
Can said brain function logically? According to your argument, it can. In fact, according to your argument, the same lesion-afflicted brain can logically say:
Yes = No

Sometimes a fella oughta step back and really think about what he's saying.[/b]

???

Originally posted by bbarr
???

Is that you stepping back and rethinking?

Originally posted by bbarr
Kelly, I am simply repeating back to you the objections you have been raising for the past several pages. Whatever responses you have to my last two posts, please simply apply them to your previous objections.

We both believe there are moral facts. We both believe that these facts do not depend on the opinions of others. You think that these facts ultima ...[text shortened]... e opinions of others. So why do you theists persist in claiming that atheism leads to nihilism?

I’m not trying to set you up, but ‘flourishing human life’ seems a
little vague to me. I can take that a couple of different ways and
still miss what you might actually mean. Can you explain it just
a little more if you don’t mind. If you need me to explain why
I’m not sure what you mean by that I will.


I'll ask the above again. "flourishing human life" is vague. It can
be taken to mean several things none of which anyone else agrees
with, since people could with hold compassion, mercy, and so on
from one group over another can do so with that as their theme
song! Why in order to make the human race flourish these
undesirable must be removed, be it undesirable due to thoughts,
beliefs, or X about their person such as color or nationality.
Kelly

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Is that you stepping back and rethinking?

No, it's me trying to figure out what the claim is, and what the argument for it is.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I’m not trying to set you up, but ‘flourishing human life’ seems a
little vague to me. I can take that a couple of different ways and
still miss what you might actually mean. Can you explain it just
a little more if you don’t mind. If you need me to explain why
I’m not sure what you mean by that I will.


I'll ask the above again. "flourishing h rable due to thoughts,
beliefs, or X about their person such as color or nationality.
Kelly

Personally, I think your account sounds like the vague one. You say that God just sort of creates moral facts. What is that supposed to mean? And, I'll remind you that your whole contention here has been that moral facts must be more than just merely a matter of human opinion. So your great insightful solution is that moral facts just somehow become merely a matter of God's opinion? I mean, just how is that any better? If you say that moral facts are merely determined by God's judgments and there is nothing independent of God to constrain these judgments; then you have provided nothing more than an account that says that moral facts are ultimately arbitrary. And I mean that literally. I just can't believe you're satisfied with that.

Originally posted by dottewell

I will try to explain precisely what I mean when I have more time. For now I'll just say it was your analogy with secondary qualities that set me thinking; I would have similar concerns about analogous statements about those in a post-Holocaust universe.

Just briefly, since I do understand your view and don't think progress will be made:

I think, if we imagine a post-holocaust universe which in which moral agents are wiped out but, for example, intrinsically valuable non-moral things are not (e.g. animals, things of great beauty, etc.), there would still be true moral statements that could be made about this universe that were not of the form:

If there were a moral agents of nature x in this universe, then it would be the case that x's doing y was wrong

But rather of the form:

It would be wrong, in this universe, to do y

Which illustrates two points that I take to be intuitively true; moral truths are not (entirely) dependent on the nature of moral agents, and moral truths do not depend, for their existence, on the existence of moral agents.

Originally posted by LemonJello
Personally, I think your account sounds like the vague one. You say that God just sort of creates moral facts. What is that supposed to mean? And, I'll remind you that your whole contention here has been that moral facts must be more than just merely a matter of human opinion. So your great insightful solution is that moral facts just somehow b rbitrary[/i]. And I mean that literally. I just can't believe you're satisfied with that.

I have read bbarr's views on moral facts, he has not been very forth
coming of late, but to me it seems that all of his moral facts were
addressed towards an end, the human race at the center of it all. I
think that is a vague central point when it comes to moral facts for the
very reason there are more than a few of us running around the
planet at this point in time, and whose 'moral facts' or whose views on
what is good/best for the human race do we say is foundational to
a 'moral fact'? We can say everyone’s views are moral facts, but that
pollutes the word fact in my estimation and the true thing that is
going on is my main complaint, all we are really looking at are moral
opinions.

You asked me to reviews bbarrs methods he brought forward early on
which to view reality and glean what is and is not a moral fact, but
those were no better than opinions when I looked at them. You could
just as easily say Bob’s view or Harold’s view and so on. Which facts if
we go back to how we define that word it does not revolved around
personal opinion. With respect to God’s point of view I’m not sure
about that one, because He could just as easily look at the grand
scheme of things and announce what is good and just, due to the
universe as it stands or He might even say this is what I like and
mold the universe thus and so, He is God so I imagine He could be
doing it any way He wants.

If God looks at the universe and announces this is the ‘best’ way to
act that is quite different than when mankind does it on so many
levels. Without God in the picture than people like Hitler or other
rulers good or bad will be setting the bar for rest of us, with their
opinions. You can say and I’d agree with you that is going on now, but
I believe there is so much more going on now that we can say we (the
human race) are being put upon by the need to justify ourselves even
if it is just to ourselves, and this does not come by a human ruler
unless we are being questioned by those in power among us.
Kelly

Originally posted by dottewell
Just briefly, since I do understand your view and don't think progress will be made:

I think, if we imagine a post-holocaust universe which in which moral agents are wiped out but, for example, intrinsically valuable non-moral things are not (e.g. animals, things of great beauty, etc.), there would still be true moral statements that could be made about ...[text shortened]... agents, and moral truths do not depend, for their existence, on the existence of moral agents.

I don't see where we disagree here. The claim you take to be true, 'It would be wrong, in this universe, to do Y', employs the verb 'to do'. But if this verb is meant to refer to actions, not merely events, then this claim presupposes that we're talking about agents. Your claim would be elliptical for the expanded claim "it would be wrong, in this universe, for an agent to do Y". But this is pretty similar to what I was claiming above, isn't it?

Originally posted by bbarr
I don't see where we disagree here. The claim you take to be true, 'It would be wrong, in this universe, to do Y', employs the verb 'to do'. But if this verb is meant to refer to actions, not merely events, then this claim presupposes that we're talking about agents. Your claim would be elliptical for the expanded claim "it would be wrong, in this universe, ...[text shortened]... an agent to do Y". But this is pretty similar to what I was claiming above, isn't it?

I am saying the moral properties of things within that universe exist irrespective of the actual existence of moral agents (i.e. agents capable of perceiving and acting on those moral properties) within that universe. Or indeed, within our actual universe.

I believe this is a point of difference, given your analogy with secondary qualities earlier in this thread.

Originally posted by bbarr
No, it's me trying to figure out what the claim is, and what the argument for it is.

I'm not the one making a claim; you are. According to your own words, a lesion-afflicted brain can fail in consistent thinking and yet be considered logical. That is the equivalent of 'yes' equalling 'no.'

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
I'm not the one making a claim; you are. According to your own words, a lesion-afflicted brain can fail in consistent thinking and yet be considered logical. That is the equivalent of 'yes' equalling 'no.'

It's the "yet be considered logical" part where I think you're confused. I am claiming that people who fail to form the belief that Q (from a brain lesion, or whatever) fail to believe as they should, and that this is a type of irrationality.

Originally posted by dottewell
I am saying the moral properties of things within that universe exist irrespective of the actual existence of moral agents (i.e. agents capable of perceiving and acting on those moral properties) within that universe. Or indeed, within our actual universe.

I believe this is a point of difference, given your analogy with secondary qualities earlier in this thread.

Your view confuses me for two reasons. First, your claim about it being wrong to kill is translatable into a conditional claim that has in its antecedent some reference to agents (it has to, since actions are only done by agents). But this conditional claim is one I agree with, and this conditional claim is true even where there are no agents. I am not sure why this is not good enough for you. Second, if moral properties can exist completely independently of agents (or minds, for that matter), then how is it that humans can detect moral properties? Abstract properties have no causal power, only their subvenient bases do.

Anyway, I think we most clearly disagree about the following sort of claim: A world with no agents can contain value. I admit I fell the pull of this claim, since I would want to say that a universe that had something of exquisite beauty would be diminished for lacking this, even if no agents were around to appreciate it. But I am concerned that this intuition of mine tacitly results from an internal imagining of what I take to be the beautiful thing; that I am somehow smuggling my own perspective into the imagining of a universe putatively without agents.

Originally posted by bbarr
It's the "yet be considered logical" part where I think you're confused. I am claiming that people who fail to form the belief that Q (from a brain lesion, or whatever) fail to believe as they should, and that this is a type of irrationality.

That irrationality is the source of the disagreement. Adkins appeared to be saying that the mind accepting all of the claim and then subsequently parsing out (and consciously rejecting) a necessary part of the claim cannot continue in acceptance of both for very long... without considerable wobble and eventual rejection of the whole proposition.

I think it was the Lord Jesus Christ who first informed us of an applicable truth:

"Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand."

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
That irrationality is the source of the disagreement. Adkins appeared to be saying that the mind accepting all of the claim and then subsequently parsing out (and consciously rejecting) a necessary part of the claim cannot continue in acceptance of both for very long... without considerable wobble and eventual rejection of the whole proposition.
...[text shortened]... nst itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand."

If that was Adkins claim, then he misunderstood everything that was being said. I was not talking about rejecting part of a claim, I was talking about failing to infer from a conjunction of two claims to an entailment of theirs, and hence failing to believe this entailment. Adkins claimed that mistakes like this are strictly logically impossible, and this is why I brought up the possibility of brain lesion.

Originally posted by bbarr
If that was Adkins claim, then he misunderstood everything that was being said. I was not talking about rejecting part of a claim, I was talking about failing to infer from a conjunction of two claims to an entailment of theirs, and hence failing to believe this entailment. Adkins claimed that mistakes like this are strictly logically impossible, and this is why I brought up the possibility of brain lesion.

Perhaps this post of yours added to the overall confusion of your claims:

I am claiming that it is logically possible for one to suffer from the failure to believe in accord with what one takes to be sufficient evidence.

A reasonable person would conclude that your use of the word logically herein is specifically meant to be applied to both the process and results of the person in question. That is to say, a person who fails to believe in accord with (from their own perspective) sufficient evidence can logically arrive at such a contradiction. The word that should have been used is conceivably, not logically.

Logic has nothing to do with such a person's thinking; rather it is entirely illogical for one to conclude anything which stands in contrast/contradiction to the remainder of their thinking. While we can speculate all manner of situations where such a situation could occur, logic is certainly not employed by the person in question, as inferred by your claim.